Members of the Bangladesh study tour visit an ADDO in Tanzania. Photo Credit: Jafary Liana

In recent years, global health stakeholders have begun to recognize the profound potential that drug shops have to advance public health goals, such as those related to malaria diagnosis and treatment, child health, and family planning. These outlets, for reasons of convenience and cost, are the first choice of care for millions of people - and until recently, they have largely been ignored.

“Drug shops and pharmacies are important sources of health care, particularly in rural areas or urban slums with few public clinics. They are often the first stop for women and men who seek FP information or services.” - World Health Organization

This is why, in 2003, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) helped launch the Accredited Drug Dispensing Outlet (ADDO) Program in Tanzania to address the important role of these informal drug sellers by creating certain standards that, when met, increase the quality of medicines and services in the community. Tanzania’s successful ADDO Program provides a model that other countries in Africa—and now Asia—have adapted and made their own.

For the past six years, MSH has hosted an internal storytelling contest, where we invite staff to submit stories on how strong health systems are saving lives and improving the health of people around the world. The stories undergo a judging process, and the winners are featured in an annual compendium.

We are proud to bring you these 12 winning stories that demonstrate the power of effective partnerships. Meet health workers, community leaders, pharmacy managers, and patients from 11 different countries, working together across the health system to build healthier communities.

Lynda, a community health volunteer (CHV) in Madagascar, is among 50 pilot users of a mobile application that helps ease the burden of reporting health service data, improve reporting accuracy and timeliness, and improve the health care and counseling that CHVs provide. More>>

There was an awkward silence and then soft giggling as the girls looked at each other. I had just finished talking about strategies for persuading sexual partners to use a condom. Laughter during these skills-building and girls empowerment sessions with 30+ secondary school students in Morogoro, Tanzania was not uncommon, particularly given the sometimes sensitive topics of discussion, but this time, the joke was lost on me.

I asked the student nearest to me, a confident teenager that I knew wouldn’t be too shy to respond, why everyone was laughing. She told me, “You speak about this as if we have a choice.” She wasn’t being sarcastic or combative, nor was she complaining - she was simply matter-of-fact about it, stating her truth.

Team of doctors and nurses at the Joint Clinical Research Centre in Uganda Photo credit: Julius Kasujja

What it takes for health systems to provide lifelong antiretrovirals

Soon after her husband’s death in 1991, Bahati Shellinah tested positive for HIV, but antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) were not yet available. In 2004 she fell ill, but, luckily, this time ARVs were available. Bahati visited the Joint Clinical Research Centre (JCRC) outside of Kampala, Uganda, and she began taking ARVs for the first time

Thankfully for Bahati, a local service provider was able to start her on treatment, but that is not the case for many people living with HIV, who often find themselves facing long waiting times, overwhelmed staff, medicine stock outs, stigma, and discrimination. No organization is immune to these challenges, and although JCRC was prepared when Bahati returned, they, too, grappled with organizational challenges as they scaled up services between 2003 and 2010. The gaps in management systems put JCRC's eligibility for donor funding at risk, which would mean patients like Bahati would lose access to their essential medicines.

HIV education is a crucial aspect of family planning services.Photo Credit: Gwenn Dubourthournieu

This year’s World Population Day coincides with the Family Planning Summit—a global moment where intentions and commitments to the right to health for all are revitalized. An essential component of HIV prevention and treatment, family planning must be prioritized in global and national agendas. Here are four reasons why:

Family planning is essential to maintaining progress on HIV goals: Meeting the needs of young people, particularly in developing countries, is critical to maintaining progress and momentum in controlling the HIV and AIDS epidemic. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth population has nearly doubled since the beginning of the epidemic, millions more young people are entering a stage in life where they may be at increased risk of exposure to HIV. With the world’s highest fertility rates and the lowest use of modern contraception, family planning services are urgently needed to help young people protect themselves and prevent new infections.

Before the civil war in the late 1990s, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had a large network of clinics and health facilities. But decades of conflict weakened a fragile health system and robbed this resource-rich country of its potential to become one of sub-Saharan Africa’s wealthiest nations. By 2010, 70 to 80 percent of Congolese people had little or no access to healthcare, and the country suffered from a lack of basic security, communication systems, power, clean water, and transportation. Exacerbated by a dearth of health providers, essential medicines and nutritious foods, the country’s maternal, infant, and child mortality rates rose to some of the highest in the world.

I’m in the U.S. this week to share my experiences working side-by-side with the Congolese government and partners on the Integrated Health Project (IHP), funded by USAID and implemented by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and its partners, International Rescue Committee and Overseas Strategic Consulting, Inc. . The aim of IHP was to rebuild and strengthen the health system and improve health across 78 health zones in the country. In five years, IHP improved health services for more than 13 million people – 17 percent of the Congolese population.

For the fifth year in a row as part of MSH's annual storytelling contest, we invited staff to submit stories on how health systems are saving lives and improving the health of people around the world. MSH staff submitted dozens of stories from 16 projects in 12 countries.

In these 12 winning stories, meet health workers, community leaders, pharmacy managers, and patients working together toward healthier communities. These stories demonstrate the power of effective partnerships to help save lives.

On this World AIDS Day, we reflect on our global successes in scaling up HIV prevention and treatment efforts and averting new infections.

The “treat all” recommendation issued by the World Health Organization in 2015 was a critical milestone in the HIV response. Also known as “test and treat,” the recommendation expands antiretroviral therapy (ART) eligibility to include all people living with HIV, regardless of CD4 count, and recommends universal lifelong treatment.

This approach ensures that HIV-positive pregnant and breastfeeding women identified in antenatal care, during labor, or while breastfeeding, can benefit from the use of lifelong ART — also known as Option B+ — rather than starting and stopping treatment if they are ineligible upon cessation of breastfeeding, which is known as Option B.

The Option B+ approach simplifies treatment guidelines and prioritizes the health of pregnant women and mothers, and it has proven effective. According to UNAIDS, the number of new HIV infections among children has decreased by 56 percent globally since 2010.